Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

A couple years ago (I don’t actually remember when!), two people I love very much asked me to marry them. Apparently, they told me, I could become a “minister” in three minutes over the Internet. If I did this, I would be able to legally marry them and any other couple (that is, any couple with the right to legally marry in this country). They aren’t religious, at least not in the strict sense of the word, but they are spiritual in a thoughtful, humanistic, practical way that I admire. They wanted somebody they knew well to be the officiate. I was honored, and also a little terrified. As usual, worst-case scenarios sped through my mind. What if they wanted me to write the ceremony and found what I’d written terribly cheesy and meaningless? What if I ruined their wedding by having a panic attack right there in front of 100 or so of their closest relatives and friends? These fears were short-lived, but there were at least three other reasons that I waited a fairly long time before givin...

Anele Rubin’s first book of poetry, Trying to Speak, is the best book of poems I’ve read in over a year. Rubin’s poems are both perfectly crafted and deeply resonant with a range of emotions as varied as the notes the keys on a piano can generate. Lately it seems I find books that do one or the other, but not both—they are either carefully crafted but not deep enough, or full of a raw, real truth that is, unfortunately, not conveyed in language precise or stark enough to leave me breathless. I feel awed only when the poet is engaged with a question or idea that is sustained throughout a manuscript and explored courageously and meticulously and tenderly. Perhaps I am so drawn to the poems in Rubin’s book because they are about the struggle to be fully present in one’s own life, one of the topics I wanted to explore originally in this blog. This struggle is always present in the poems, and the poems’shapes reflect the content flawlessly. The narratives and images feel reticent, small, ca...